Business
Study: Europe’s top companies are subject to world comparison
Europe’s top corporations cannot keep up with the heavyweights from the USA and Asia in sales and profit development. German companies do particularly badly.
The largest corporations from the United States and Asia left Europe’s top companies in sales and profits last year. This is shown by a study for which the examination and consulting company EY analyzed the balance sheets of the 1,000-sales stock exchange companies in the world. The top companies from the United States increased their sales by an average of 4.5 percent in 2024, those from Asia by 3.2 percent. Europe’s large companies had to accept a minus of 1.1 percent.
According to the study, the deficit at profit is even clearer: According to the study, Asian corporations increased by almost a fifth (19.5 percent), the companies from the United States by 8.2 percent. In Europe, the profits of top players fell on average by 6.5 percent. German corporations performed particularly weakly: their sales decreased by 3.1 percent, the profit fell by 8.5 percent.
The group of 1,000 stock market companies is dominated by the United States. They provide 317 companies. China (137) and Japan (110) follow. Germany ends up in fourth place with 43 corporations.
Ey expert: “The situation is serious”
According to EY expert Jan Brorhilker, Europe’s top corporations are still under pressure in global competition-not least due to the weakening industrial granches, geopolitical tensions and customs loads. “The location is really serious and is currently getting cocks: While the top-us groups recently grew vigorously and increasing their profits, Europe’s companies are increasingly seeing themselves on the defensive,” he said.
The special strength of Europe in the industrial sector is currently a big challenge. Because traditional industries such as the car industry are in a profound change. The chaotic US customs policy comes to the absolute wrong in this mixture. This leads to further financial burdens and an enormous uncertainty
Digital superiority: Europe is missing the connection
At the same time, the US tech companies dominate. There are none from Europe among the ten most profitable stock market companies in the world. Seven, on the other hand, come from the USA-including Apple, the Google Group Alphabet, the Software-Riese Microsoft and the chip group Nvidia. Brorhilker said that this market power had little to counter this market power. Very few European companies played in the top league area in the technology area.
The weak installation proves to be an additional inhibitory: “While industrial companies are massively suffering from tariffs and trade restrictions and disturbed supply chains, digital companies record record gains and can invest billions in innovations,” said Brorhilker.
No European company in profit-top-10
The stock market company with the world’s biggest profit was the oil company Saudi Aramco. The Saudis made an operational profit of around $ 191 billion. The most profitable European company was the oil and gas group Shell. The British took 13th place. The first German company in the global ranking of a profit was Deutsche Telekom (19th place) with a good 26 billion euros.
The top -selling stock exchange companies 2024 were the trading giants Walmart and Amazon as well as Saudi Aramco. The high-placed German companies in sales sequence were the car manufacturers Volkswagen (9), Mercedes-Benz (35) and BMW (36) and Deutsche Telekom (50).
dpa
Source: Stern
